Advising Backup Even If It's Too Late - Too Much

Guys, I wonder...

Why do most of us keep advising people that they should have backed up?
Including me, some people always says "You should always backup" or similar things to the guys who already lost their data.

First of all, it probably pisses the asker off. When I was a newbie on computers, I lost all of my data thanks to a dangerous experiment on my computer. I was also new on the Internet, I asked a question on a forum. And there was 5-6 posts saying I should HAVE backed up before the post that tried to help me. Those 5-6 posts... I hated them.
Then I started doing that

Second, there are some things that nothing could affect people's behaviors. I bet there are billions of forum posts on the Internet that aims to educate people about how important it is to backup, to use antivirus, to save your work frequently, to know the dangers before enrolling into beta programs, to browse the Internet safely, not to enter your credit card info on a public computer etc.
Yet, there is a new guy, who does the exact the opposite. And more interestingly, there is this old guy, who had been there, did the same thing again.

I believe the most useless advice is backup. I can't remember how many times I told my friends to backup their devices, because s*it happens. They won't do it, and when the s*it happens, they start fresh, and somehow they believe that it was the only time that the sh*t happened. It WILL happen.

But who am I talking to?

I got sick of this, and stopped telling people to backup. Why do you guys still go on? I mean it's not a bad thing, but how come you are not sick of it yet?

mesut said:

Guys, I wonder...

Why do most of us keep advising people that they should have backed up?
Including me, some people always says "You should always backup" or similar things to the guys who already lost their data.

Click to expand...

There are three categories of people:

1. Those that know they should backup & do backup.
2. Those that know they should backup & don't backup.
3. Those that don't know they should backup at all.

When someone posts a thread…we rarely know which category they fall into. So if we don't mention to folks that they should perform backups…the folks that fall into category #3 will never learn that they should do backups.

And the folks that fall into category #2…deserve what they get for not backing up!!!

mesut said:

I believe the most useless advice is backup.

Click to expand...

It's better to advise folks to do something…and maybe 1% listen to you. Then not to advise them at all…and have 100% mess up.

This same logic also applies to many other things:

- Don't over eat.
- Exercise daily.
- Don't smoke cigarettes.
- Don't drink too much alcohol.
- Don't pick your nose in public.
- Don't scratch your butt in public.
- etc. etc.

- Nick

Like I said, I was in the 3rd category when I first started to use computers. Back then, internet was expensive and not much people had it, so it was difficult to get information. And even if I had the information, I did not have the means to get a backup software.

But that's not the point.

There's this thing called Google, I'm sure you know it. When I have a problem, Google shows me some pages even if I just type out my question, like "I have this computer with 4 GB RAM, and I don't know if it will work well with Yosemite. Will it?" Even this would return something. Searching is not a difficult task.

And it's not just forum posts that tell us to backup. It's pretty much every article about computers. The 3rd category should not have too many members, right? Everybody has a geek friend nowadays (If you don't have him, you are the geek lol).

I think there's only 2 categories man. 3rd category is a subcategory of 2nd, I think. If you have an important data, you'd feel the need to have it somewhere else, just in case.

And try to visualize how angry a man in the first category would be if his long awaited answer was "Backup, dude. Saves lives."

mesut said:

There's this thing called Google, I'm sure you know it. When I have a problem, Google shows me some pages even if I just type out my question, like "I have this computer with 4 GB RAM, and I don't know if it will work well with Yosemite. Will it?" Even this would return something. Searching is not a difficult task.

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- Many folks are either lazy…or don't think to do an internet search before asking a question on an internet forum.

- There are also some folks in the world who believe that if they can get someone else to do their work for them…then why not??

- Or…some folks feel that it takes less time to type a short internet forum question…than to spend lots & lost of time searching the internet for an answer.

mesut said:

Everybody has a geek friend nowadays (If you don't have him, you are the geek lol).

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Not true.

mesut said:

And try to visualize how angry a man in the first category would be if his long awaited answer was "Backup, dude. Saves lives."

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The person that falls into this category deserves what they get. If someone knows the correct course of action…and they don't follow it…they only have one person to blame (themselves). This is called taking personal responsibility.

- If someone smokes cigarettes for 50 years…expect to get lung cancer…plain & simple.
- If someone crosses a busy street many times/day without looking before they cross…expect to get hit by a car or truck.
- If someone does not backup their computer files & applications…one day expect a hard drive crash…and they should expect to lose everything.

* Nick

Some don't care. I don't. My iMac could blow up and I couldn't care less. The only thing of value are my photos (uploaded to a storage site) and my emails (on a cloud).

@dotdotdot
It's not that you don't care. If you didn't care, you wouldn't have your photos uploaded to somewhere else than your drive.
You won't come up with a thread asking how to get your photos back. You backed up what mattered to you.
You just don't care if you had to reinstall the OS and all the apps. That's it.

I'm just wondering what motivates the guys who still advises people to back up to those who don't do even as much as you did.

OK so I guess I technically have backed up, you're right.

mesut said:

I'm just wondering what motivates the guys who still advises people to back up to those who don't do even as much as you did.

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You're making assumptions. You're assuming that the people saying "You should make backups" actually are aware that the person in question (the person who didn't have a backup)…knows that they should make backups. If the person that didn't have a backup doesn't tell us FIRST that they know they should have made a backup…then we don't know this before saying…"You should have made a backup."

Two examples. If someone posts a thread on Mac-Forums and says:

1. "My hard drive just crashed…what do I do…is there anyway for me to recover my data?"

My first question to this person would be…"Do you have a backup?"

2. "My hard drive just crashed…what do I do…is there anyway for me to recover my data? By the way…I know that I should have made a backup."

In this situation I might have said…"Too bad you didn't have a backup. There may be some ways to recover your data…but those methods may not be 100% effective…and they may be expensive."

The bottom line is. Many folks do many things in this world. And when they do a "thing"…in many cases...they know the right way…and they know the wrong or risky way.

If someone chooses not to backup their computers data (assuming that they have data that is important enough to them to make backups)…and they don't do it…then they know they are the one who made that decision & messed up.

And if someone comes along and says…"Dude..you REALLY should have made a backup!"]/i] The original person just has to say…"Yeah…I know. I will next time!"

- Nick

Personally I don't believe in in telling people to bar the gate after the horse has bolted. I assume they have already leaned that lesson by the time they post on this site, whether they act on it in the future is up to them. If I mention it at all it's for the benefit of others who may read the thread to hopefully avoid the same situation, so yes, I do harp on the subject a bit.
The other aspect of this subject is how to back up. I run a "DocMac" session at a local resource centre once a week and this is a question I get asked a lot. TM, CCC, SuperDuper or just data, which is best? Do I need more than one type of backup? What are the limitations of each?
So in our humble and limited way we try to promote backups in any way we can and assist people to set them up.

I guess, at least, this problem should become less of an issue now that cloud storage is baked into OSX and will be baked into Windows 10 (not sure if 8 already has this or not).

pigoo3 said:

there are three categories of people:

1. Those that know they should backup & do backup.
2. Those that know they should backup & don't backup.
3. Those that don't know they should backup at all.

When someone posts a thread…we rarely know which category they fall into. So if we don't mention to folks that they should perform backups…the folks that fall into category #3 will never learn that they should do backups.

And the folks that fall into category #2…deserve what they get for not backing up!!!



it's better to advise folks to do something…and maybe 1% listen to you. Then not to advise them at all…and have 100% mess up.

This same logic also applies to many other things:

- don't over eat.
- exercise daily.
- don't smoke cigarettes.
- don't drink too much alcohol.
- don't pick your nose in public.
- don't scratch your butt in public.
- etc. Etc.

- nick

Click to expand...

lmbo qft... :-d

mesut said:

I believe the most useless advice is backup.

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It's probably the most useful advice to give someone. There is no bigger computer trauma that losing everything you have on a piece of media (except for maybe losing/irreparably damaging the machine itself). I'm not sure why telling people to backup is useless. Telling them after the fact? Maybe but it helps to prevent things in the future.

dbm said:

I guess, at least, this problem should become less of an issue now that cloud storage is baked into OSX and will be baked into Windows 10 (not sure if 8 already has this or not).

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I'm inclined to disagree - the presence of something doesn't necessarily mean that people will use it.

vansmith said:

I'm inclined to disagree - the presence of something doesn't necessarily mean that people will use it.

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Agreed! Same exact logic the OP was mentioning (just because someone knows that they should backup…doesn't mean they will). iCloud or a backup hard drive.

- Nick

vansmith said:

It's probably the most useful advice to give someone. There is no bigger computer trauma that losing everything you have on a piece of media (except for maybe losing/irreparably damaging the machine itself). I'm not sure why telling people to backup is useless. Telling them after the fact? Maybe but it helps to prevent things in the future.

Click to expand...

I meant, it's useless because only a small percentage listens to it.

But I'm talking about this, if you really have something important on your computer, you'd try to save another copy. I was careless once, until I lost my Fifa 2000 save files (I was a kid).
It was a cheap accident for me, and taught me that I have to copy precious stuff somewhere else. And this led me to look for the ways to do it properly and things developed later.

My point with all of this is, I think backup thing is something people can't appreciate the importance of until it is needed. Because there is a false sense of security here. Computers are reliable? That's the advertisement.

I just wish there was a way to determine who was advised to backup before lol.

mesut said:

I meant, it's useless because only a small percentage listens to it.

Click to expand...

Just because people don't listen doesn't mean you shouldn't tell people to do something.

mesut said:

My point with all of this is, I think backup thing is something people can't appreciate the importance of until it is needed.

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Hence the need to tell people to back up.

mesut said:

My point with all of this is, I think backup thing is something people can't appreciate the importance of until it is needed. Because there is a false sense of security here. Computers are reliable? That's the advertisement.

I just wish there was a way to determine who was advised to backup before lol.

Click to expand...

I absolutely agree 100% with what you're saying! Sometimes it does take one small (or large) loss of data for folks to finally appreciate the importance of backing up.

Like you mentioned earlier…there really are very few folks using computers...who don't really know that they should make backups…just so many folks rarely do it (and then of course it's too late).

And I also agree with you. "Rubbing someone's nose" in the problem (not backing up data in this case) is no solution either.

But we also have to know the context of the situation. If someone is posting on an internet forum that they just had a hard drive crash & how can they recover their data. At this point (and with the info given) we don't know what their computer skill level or knowledge is of this person.

And this is possibly where someone may reply…"You should have made a backup." Then the original poster may reply back in anger…"I KNOW THAT!". Which may be true…but…the first person replying didn't know that the OP knew that…since the OP never mentioned it (we can't read minds).

- Nick

vansmith said:

I'm inclined to disagree - the presence of something doesn't necessarily mean that people will use it.

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By 'baked in' I was meaning that it will be the default behaviour for the system. Time will tell how iCloud drive works in detail, but I expect there will be no reason not to use it.

iCloud Drive will not be a default method of saving files, let alone backups. And there are plenty of reasons not to use it (no useful functionality, use of a third party solution, bandwidth constraints, etc).

iCloud Drive will not be a default method of saving files, let alone backups. And there are plenty of reasons not to use it (no useful functionality, use of a third party solution, bandwidth constraints, etc).